Mr. Colm Campbell:

I thank the Cathaoirleach and members for the invitation. I will provide an overview of ONE and discuss its strategic plan and goals, in particular in the context of veterans' policy. We will be happy to take questions at the end of the presentation.

The organisation was founded in 1951, in the aftermath of the major demobilisation following the Emergency - Second World War. That demobilisation had a great effect on veterans, leaving many of them homeless and in dire circumstances. The organisation transitioned in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when veterans were found dead on the streets of Dublin. The organisation, like IUNVA, believed that should not happen and that these people should be supported, and transitioned the organisation into the charity it is today. We opened our first home, in Queen Street, Dublin, in 1994 and replaced that home and added two more in 2005 and 2006. In 2007, we signed a service level agreement with the Department of Defence which, as I have often said, was not important for what was in it but because we now had a service level agreement with the Department. It gave the organisation official recognition.

In 2012, we opened our first veterans support centres, which can be simply explained as a cross between an advice centre and a men's or women's shed. They are somewhere to go for a cup of tea or, equally, to organise a bed for the night and so on. The 2015 White Paper on Defence included an embryonic veterans' policy. We, IUNVA, ARCO and the other associations welcomed that but stressed it was embryonic. Over the past three years, we have developed a nationwide network of these veterans support, drop-in centres. Senator Craughwell visited one we opened at Cathal Brugha Barracks the week before last. These veterans support centres were contained in the programme for Government of June 2020 and we welcomed that. This year and for the next two years, we are expanding our homelessness capacity nationwide to 60 bedrooms.

Today, ONE has 37 branches, 15 veterans support centres and four homes operating, namely: Brú Chostúim, Athlone, which has seven bedrooms; the recently opened Brú na Farraige, Cobh, which has five bedrooms and is receiving the final touches; Brú na bhFiann, Dublin, our flagship home, which has 35 bedrooms; and Brú Doire Feá, Letterkenny, with seven bedrooms. We are planning our Cork city branch in co-operation with Cork City Council and will have another meeting with the council next week. That will give us an additional six bedrooms, bringing the totality to 60 bedrooms nationwide.

Veterans support officers have been in place for the past year and a half to two years. They are counsellors, for want of a better term. In head office, they work in partnership with the Leopardstown Park Hospital Trust, one of our charity partners. As members will be aware, the trust was founded initially to look after veterans of the British army but now also supports veterans of the Defence Forces. At Brú na bhFiann, we have a full-time counsellor in partnership with the HSE Dublin north community healthcare area and are under discussions - we had a meeting two weeks ago - with the Cork-Kerry community healthcare area to provide a further counsellor in Cork city. In the greater Cork-Kerry area, there are five branches, two veterans support areas and two houses, and one counsellor covers all of that.

We also hold monthly medical clinics. Deputy Berry, who is a doctor, provides the multi-medical clinic on a voluntary basis in Dublin and another veteran provides a monthly medical clinic at our house in Athlone. We have about 1,000 members and about 2,100 supporters donate annually. We have a new website at one-veterans.org. Prior to the opening of the new house in Cork next year or the year after that, we have 54 beds, or about 20,000 bed nights every year. We have kept about 1,000 veterans safely off the streets and about 90% of those veterans progress to permanent accommodation.

If members remember nothing else from this briefing, I ask them to remember four words, namely, support, comradeship, advocacy and remembrance, because that is what ONE does. On support, members will see the mission statement on the slide, which is registered with the Charities Regulator and is stated in our constitution and our handbook of rules. It relates to providing accommodation through the houses and other supports through our veteran support centres and our branches.

On comradeship, I often say civilians have colleagues, whereas members of the Defence Forces have comrades. That comradeship comes from a shared experience, a shared set of values and a willingness to serve. Advocacy relates in part to what we are doing at this meeting, while remembrance includes events such as the Niemba anniversary at Cathal Brugha Barracks last week.

If that is the mission, the values, which I do not think will be a stranger to any committee members, comprise commitment, compassion, comradeship, honesty, respect and, principally, service to others. That relates to helping fellow veterans who may be less fortunate, with no expectation of anything in return.

Strategy is all about means, ways and ends. The ends are the mission and values I just mentioned. The means include everything, such as ONE and other veterans' associations but Oireachtas committees such as this one as well. Finally, the ways are our eight strategic goals, which are wrapped around the veteran. Governance is first and foremost because in a charity, as members will well know as they have all been involved in charities, if the governance aspect is not done right, the rest will collapse. The other strategic goals comprise: support and awareness; a viable veterans' policy; financial stability; strengthening the organisation; the veterans support centres and the hospital network I mentioned; and a diversity and inclusion policy. We deliberately included the inclusion policy because there is sometimes a perception veterans' organisations are just for old men, and we as veterans' organisations need to change that and are addressing that actively. Veterans today leave the Defence Forces earlier than in the past, so we have to look after that coterie of veterans as well as the older veterans and those people who get into trouble.

I will now concentrate on one of the goals, that is, the veterans' policy. It seeks, in union with the other veterans' organisations and the Government, to ensure the continued development of a viable and sustainable Government veterans' policy. We define the veterans' policy as the declaration of the Government's political activities, plans and intentions relating to veterans of the Defence Forces. We believe veterans' policy requires a whole-of-government approach because many of the issues affecting veterans, such as housing and healthcare, do not fall within the remit of the Department of Defence or the Defence Forces. We have three priority areas in the veterans' policy domain, that is, the creation of an office of veterans affairs, research to underpin veterans' policy and a policy imprimatur for the essential work ONE does on behalf of veterans.

We formally proposed the creation of an office of veterans affairs in December 2017. We believe it is the key enabler to get the other work done. It would operate in a similar manner to the office of emergency planning, located in Agriculture House, and work with all relevant Departments and other key public authorities.

The envisaged role of the veterans association is facilitating and co-ordinating the delivery of a range of services, providing opportunities to veterans to have their service acknowledged, managing the Government's relationship with veterans, advising the Government on veterans' issues and co-ordinating with other Departments and agencies on aspects of policy that relate to veterans. The main area of concentration is that it is not a Defence Forces or Department of Defence veterans' policy but an all-of-government veterans' policy.

Ourselves and IUNVA do much work in support of veterans. We have much evidence based on experience but we really believe that the veterans' policy should be underpinned by research on the impact of service and the needs of veterans. Earlier I spoke about 60 rooms for homeless veterans. We do not know whether there should be 80 or 50 rooms but we believe, based on our experience, that about 60 is right. We also believe that empirical evidence is required to move that policy in the right direction. The research would include: family break-up among veterans; the prevalence of homelessness among the veteran community and other housing issues; the extent and impact of post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD; substance misuse; the impact of institutionalisation and other issues impacting on the transition to civilian life; the differing impact of service on male veterans, female veterans, veterans of differing sexual persuasions and orientation, and differing ethnicities; and of course suicide.

Earlier I mentioned that our veteran support centres and, indeed, the veteran support centres of IUNVA were included in the programme for Government on 15 June 2020. That gave policy imprimaturfor those veteran support centres. We would like our other key areas to have equal policy imprimaturso that is our homes, counsellors and pathway for end-of-life care, which we operate with section 38 hospitals, and basic multi-annual. I do not think that either organisation is looking for huge money but we need basic multi-annual funding.

In summary, I have provided a snapshot of the last 70 years and what we have done in 2021 in ONE. I spoke about our strategic plan with our ways, means and ends. I specifically and deliberately spoke about one of our eight strategic goals, which is goal 3 on veterans' policy.We will take questions at the end.